Orlando
and Claudio lead an expedition descending the unknown River Reixoto
Azevedo attempting to save the Stone Age tribes of the Amazon, including
the Kreen - Akrore, largely in the Xingú River area, which is where
Colonel Fawcett disappeared in the 1930's.By Andrian Cowell

He
created the Xingu National Park as the home-land of the Indians.
Together with his brothers helped spread the notion that Indians should
not be acculturated and civilized, but they should be left alone and as
isolated as possible from the rest of the Brazilians. The park by 1994
had 6,000 Indians living in 18 settlements from different tribes. He was
called by the Indians 'The Father' and when he died, chief Raoni, from
Kayapo tribe reacted:
"Now our father is gone. The Indians father is dead. He used to
tell us that everybody in the city was crazy. He also taught us that the
white man's life is not good for us."

Because of its immense size,
much of Amazonia remains unexplored even today. The area is still a dangerous and difficult place to
travel leaving many plants and animals unknown to scientists. However, the twentieth century inventions have made a huge
difference for modern explorers, the aeroplane and the radio.

In the 1940s, during a 55 years period - 40 of them living inside
the jungle - dedicated to the Brazilian Indians, Claudio Villas-Boasamassed
some impressive numbers. He helped to build more than 30 airfields for
the Brazilian
Governmentin remote areas of the Amazon rainforest,
in the middle of the jungle. They did this by parachuting in with men
and supplies, then worked to clear an area to build an airstrip and a
small outpost. He also opened more than 1,000 miles of trails under the
Amazon canopy. Claudiohad
also some 250 bouts of malaria, give or take a few fevers and an unknown
number of reports on his first-hand experience with the indigenous
people.

They were three brothers (from a total of 11 siblings) devoted to
the same cause. The Villas-Boas—Orlando, Leonardoand Claudio—became legendary in Brazil
and around the world among environmentalists and human rights activists.
Their names were constantly cited as candidates for the Nobel
Peace Prize, and in 1973 they were even nominated for the award, but they never
got it. The brothers developed a respect for and friendship with the
local Indians, and became strong supporters for Indian rights.

Claudio
Villas Boas (Chris Menges)

In
1961 they established the Xingu
reserve, which is an area along theXingu Riverwhere several tribes have been
relocated. At the time that the reserve was set up, many of the Amazon Indians
had lost their land to settlers and developers – sometimes resulting in bitter
wars. The aim of the reserve is ensure that the Indians had their own territory
where they could continue to live relatively undisturbed. The reserve has had
many problems, such as getting formerly warring tribes to live together,
fighting diseases such as tuberculosis often devastate newly contacted Indians
tribes, and pressure from outside developers. But despite these problems, the
reserve has had a significant role preserving Indian culture, and helping to
teach Indians skills, which they need to survive in the modern world.

Diauarum:
Claudio with Indian child (Jesco von Puttkamer)

Claudio,
the sertanista (backland expert) died from a stroke in his apartment in
Sao Paulo. According to Luciana Soares Santos, his secretary and caretaker for
the last four years, his last words were: "Luciana, Luciana, call
Orlando". He was suffering from severe depression for a year, according to
Brother Orlando, due to his retirement and distance from his beloved Indians.
"Since he was single, work was extremely important for him, " Orlando,
who has two sons, Noel and Orlando, told the daily O
Estado de S. Paulo. "I have a different temperament, I take care of my
family and I am more agitated, holding conferences throughout Brazil.”

Taciturn
among the white men, he loved to spend hours talking to his Indian friends.
After a period of seven years in which he lived among the Indians without ever
leaving, he lost all his documents. He was forced to get them all again when he
decided to travel.

The
former president of Funai, Sidney Possuelo, also an indigenist and a friend of
his, recalled a story of a chicken coop that Claudio built in the jungle to
protect the birds from the bats. The shelter was so nicely done and the sertanista
loved it so much that instead of placing the chickens there, he moved himself to
the new quarters and stayed there until his retirement. Claudio left unfinished A
Arte dos Pajis (The Shamans' Art), a book he was writing. Orlando and
Claudio wrote 13 books together besides documenting all their fieldwork.

Claudio
was born on December 8, 1916 in Botucatu, in the interior of the state of Sao
Paulo. He was 27 years old when in 1943 he joined his two brothers in the
Roncador-Xingu expedition also known as Marcha para o Oeste (March to the West),
his first taste of the adventures lying ahead. At the time, Indians were not
commanding quite the same respect as they get nowadays. The adventure continued
until the mid-sixties and was told in detail in the book Marcha
para o Oeste. The expedition perfectly suited President Getϊlio Vargas'
(1883-1954) desire to establish contacts with groups of Indians who were showing
hostility against peasants trying to expand the agricultural frontier of the
country as the incursions were presented at the time. In the wake of the
Villas-Boas' effort, 34 cities and hundreds of villages were born.

Together
with his brothers, Claudio contacted some of the most feared tribes like the
Kalapalos, Kayabi, Kamaiuros, Meinacos, and Txucarramoes. In 1973 they were able
to contact for the first time in the north of the state of Mato Grosso the
Kreen-Akarore Indians also known as Panaros or the giant Indians. After his
brother's death, Orlando talked about those heroic pioneer times: "At the
beginning of the expedition we were admitted as manual workers because Flaviano
de Mattos Vanique, the expedition chief, didn't hire but illiterate people. One
day he found out we could read and Claudio became chief of staff, Leonardo began
to take care of the warehouse, and I became the secretary."

Orlando
Villas Boas (John Moore)

Orlando
recalls several incidents with the Indians: "We started the expedition at
Roncador do Xingu on the banks of the Araguaia River, marched to Rio das Mortes
(River of Deaths) and from there on to Manaus. It was a hard walk. In the
Xavante region alone we had 18 skirmishes with the Indians, and it took us 11
months to cross a 200-mile area. In the Xingu area we started to meet Indians
who had never been in contact with white men. Some were very aggressive, but
they are all our friends today. We found out that the Indians had an organized,
stable, and peaceful society where everybody lived well."

Claudio
helped spread the notion that Indians should not be acculturated and civilized,
but that they should be left alone and as isolated as possible from the rest of
the Brazilians. The creation of Parque Nacional do Xingu-reservation was the
fruit of this vision. The same with Funai (Fundacio Nacional do Indio—National
Foundation of the Indian), the organization that replaced the SPI (Servico de
Protecto do Indio—Indian Protection Service).

He
was the most intellectual of the three and the one who least liked to socialize,
talk, and to give interviews. Orlando, much more talkative, is 84 years old.
Leonardo died in 1961 at age 43, the same year when pressured by the
Villas-Boas, president Junio Quadros—he stayed in power a mere seven months
before an abrupt and never-explained resignation from the presidency—created
the Parque Nacional do Xingu. By 1994, the Xingu Park dreamed by the Villas-Boas
as a "society of nations" had 6,000 Indians living in 18 settlements
from different tribes.

Claudio's
last expedition in the jungle happened in 1976. At the time, he and Orlando
tried without success to find an indigenous tribe. That same year he left his
post a Diauarum, inside Parque do Xingu. He went then to Sao Paulo to live with
his adopted son Tauarru, a 12-year-old Indian who would die ten years later in a
car accident. In 1976 Claudio talked about his fear for the future of the
Indians: "Who, like myself, lived more than 30 years among the Indians,
feels that they represent another humankind, with complex values that we are not
able to grasp." He used to say that the haste to conquer the Amazon was
destroying the Indians. He also feared the encroachment of garimpeiros (gold prospectors) over Indian Territory and their
diseases, bad habits like alcohol consumption and the poisoning of the waters
with mercury.

In Almanaque do Serto.
(Backlands Almanac) it is registered how in 1947 the Villas-Boas reported by
telegraph the reaction of the Indians to a solar eclipse: In order to reignite
the sun, 200 warriors threw their arrows towards the sun while the children
cried and the women painted their own bodies. Told about Claudio's death, chief
Raoni, from the Kayapo tribe, reacted: "Now our father is gone. The Indians' father
is dead. He used to tell us that everybody in the cities was crazy. He also
taught us that the white man's life is not good for us."

For Orlando
Villas-Boas, Brazil's most renowned indianist alive, it was a time
of high emotion. "My father, my father", repeated cacique
Kanato, an old Indian who was still a young man when Orlando
first met him at the end of the '40s. Orlando
and Kanato embraced each other and
cried.

The
spirits of brothers Claudio and Alvaro Villas-Boas—the
best friends the Brazilian Indians ever had among the white man—were
finally freed from their earthly chains to rivers and forests and were
able to get to the "stars village" high up in the skies. Their
lives were celebrated in a Quarup, the highest homage paid by the Indians
to their dead heroes. Orlando,
84, was there to see it all. He is the last survivor of the four
Villas-Boas brothers, who in the '40s started contacting tribes on the
border of the Xingu river—an Amazon tributary—in Central Brazil. For
32 years Orlando and Claudio lived with the Indians. The fourth
Villas-Boas—Leonardo—died in 1961

At the Kamayuraaldeia (village) in the Amazon
High Xingu, Tacumu is the cacique
(chief) and the host for the Quarup, the ritual party for the dead.
Everybody else is guest: more than 1100 Indians from several tribes. The
guests started to arrive on Friday, on the eve of the celebration. The
Yawalapitis were the first to get there followed by the Wauras and then
the Awetis. The Meynako, Kuikuro, Kalapalo, Matipu, Nafukuo and Trumay
tribes came in Saturday, July 25. The Quarup dances, which started
Saturday morning, would last until the breaking of the next day.

Tacumu
leads over a community of 300 Indians living in 15 malocas(collective
huts). For 400 years his people have lived on the banks of the Ipavu
lagoon.
"Clαudio
died in the city," he said, "but his spirit moved here, so we
decided to do the Quarup, so he can rest in peace in the village of the
stars."

Ulisses
Capozoli, one of the reporters invited for the Quarup, mocked in his long
piece published by daily O
Estado de S. Paulo the government involvement in the ceremonies. "Justice
Minister, Renan Calheiros, makes an empty speech, and heeding a request
from Iris Rezende, his predecessor on the post, "warns"
the Indians not to burn the forest. There is a refined irony here. The
former minister owns a huge farm with large deforested areas just beside
the park. In the lands of his brother, Orlando, the spectacle is even sadder. Black and
smoldering tree trunks show the effects of a recent fire although there is
a vague economic justification for all of this."

The
mainstream media, which was drawn to the spectacle, seemed mesmerized by
the bonfires, the mystery of the jungle, and the solemnity of the dances
and chants. And at times the Indians seemed puzzled by the shoves, screams
and lack of sportsmanship exhibited by photographers jockeying for a
better shooting position.

Other
white men like anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro and indianist marshal Candido
Rondon were celebrated in a Quarup, but nothing that compared to the show
put on for brothers Claudio, who died March 1998 and Alvaro
Villas-Boas dead in 1996, plus the Indian warrior Mariki.
Experts believe this was the largest Quarup ever staged for white men.

Maynapu,
an Yawalapiti warrior, described the role of Quarup as an integrator
factor: "The dead must be remembered and grieved with respect, but
after the pain it is time for the huka-huka
(wrestling) joy. "

The tree
trunks were placed in the center of the village. "For us they are all
the same," explained Tacumu, even though Mariki's trunk is thinner in
deference to the white men, and the one representing Claudio
was
placed in the center because he was the one of the two brothers who lived
more among the Indians.

It was a
time of high emotion and tears for Orlando, the sole survivor of the Villas-Boas. He
reencountered Indians he hadn't seen for 30 years. Since 1984 the
indianist had not visited the Xingu
Park Indian Reservation, one of the
better-known Villas-Boas accomplishments. "My
father, my father", repeated cacique Kanato, an Indian who is in his '60s, but who was still a
young man when Orlando first
met him at the end of the '40s. Both men embraced each other and cried.

Not all
participants came simply to mourn and celebrate the lives of dead heroes,
though. Pegrati, 15, for example, was excited about the possibility of
finding a wife. Said the Meynako warrior incapable of hiding a broad
smile: "After one year in reclusion the virgins are being released
and I didn't want to miss this opportunity. The Kamayurα girls are
very pretty. I might get lucky and marry one."

Amid all the
emotion, Orlando Villas-Boas talked about his concern for the future of the
area. In an interview with Rio's daily Jornal
do Brasilhe declared: "The High Xingu is a world reference for
the preservation of indigenous culture. You need to have more resources to
maintain this status. The biggest danger to the rivers that form the Xingu
river basin is the pollution at the headwater of the tributaries. If the
aggression to the springs is not prevented the Xingu will be jeopardized
in the next millenium." And Orlando, who has already spelled out his wish to
be buried in the Xingu reservation, continued talking about his brother:
"Claudio
was my other half. With his death I lost a piece of my heart. But tomorrow
I will also die. The people from Xingu are the ones who cannot die. My
brothers died believing that Brazil would not do to their Indians what the
United States did. Some say that our names—mine and Claudio's—might be
nominated for a Nobel Prize. If this happens the merit belongs to the
Indians who taught us more than learned from us."

The
Villas-Boas brothers' dreams might inspire a new generation of
Villas-Boas. Chief Tacumu made an
invitation to Noel, the youngest son of
Orlando to live in the reservation and to continue his father work. The
23-year-old Philosophy (at PUC, the Sao Paulo catholic university) and
Linguistics (at USP, Universidade de Sao Paulo) student is not against the
idea but says that is too early for such a serious commitment and
responsibility."